CBeebies – Shall I compare thee to a summers day? And another ten things’ guest post.

Hi I’m Suzanne and I live by the beach in north Liverpool with my husband and our two-year old daughter. We also have a dog and a cat who were our original children before we realised having pets is nothing like raising real human beings. The cat still hasn’t forgiven us for making her live with a child.

I started my blog – ‘and another ten things’ – because I love a good list and I love a good laugh so I’ve combined the two to try and make sense of parenting and life. Like all good lives it contains a lot of sarcasm, a little too much swearing and not enough Ryan Gosling.

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I have documented my love of, and slight parenting reliance on, CBeebies before but this summer it really has been taken to a whole new level. Even before we stumbled upon the kids’ TV legend that is Dave Benson-Phillips entertaining the masses at the Liverpool Pirate Festival, the Child had been in the audience at the CBeebies’ Prom and A Midsummer Nights’ Dream and the seen the presenters’ perform their live shenanigans at the Geronimo Festival. It is pretty fair to say CBeebies has sponsored our summer. It’s been great (and costly) for the most part but I have learnt ten key things:
1. The Child will try to storm the stage. Repeatedly. Sometimes she’ll try to take all her clothes off first and sometimes we’ll be sat next to a BBC Producer as the Child sobs ‘but I want to touch Andy’ very VERY loudly.

2. But when the Child actually does come face-to-face with her heroes she’ll act as though she’s totally not arsed so you look like a right loony who is just using their child as an excuse to meet Mr Bloom. Or worse she’ll puncture an actor’s fragile ego with three little words – “who is that?”

3. I realised I am a right loony who will use their child to meet Mr Bloom (still haven’t yet but one day my time the Child’s time will come).

4. The Child will get so hyper beforehand she’ll fall asleep in the actual show, rendering the whole excursion pretty much pointless.

5. Mr Tumble is literally a God for the under 5s. When he comes on stage (even if it’s via a pre-recorded link) it’s like Beatlemania all over again. I’m not kidding they probably have ambulances on standby in case kids start fainting with sheer joy.

6. The Child now thinks we’re actually friends with the CBeebies’ lot. Sometimes when I ask her what she wants to do for the day she asks if we can invite Andy and Rebecca over to play. I can’t quite bring myself to tell her I don’t actually know them so sometimes I leave a hat that looks a lot like Andy’s Dinosaur Adventures hat at the end of her bed and tell her he visited her when she’s asleep*.

7. I’ve become obsessed with the presenters’ youthfulness. I mean I know I’ve mentioned this before but they never bloody age. Chris Jarvis and Dave Benson-Phillips were presenting kids’ TV when I was a child and they still look the same. How the hell does that work?!

8. The songs will haunt me until the day I die.

9. The CBeebies’ lot are as nice and perky off-stage as on. I’m not going to reveal how I know this as I may have breached my restraining order (I jest of course, let’s just say I have connections) but I promise those smiles don’t come off in the Green Room.

10. It will never be enough. When I started writing this post I thought my CBeebies’ year was over and then the Husband sent me a link to this:

That’s Christmas sponsored by CBeebies too then. FML (except not because I fricking LOVE them all).

*Now I’ve written that down it sounds really creepy so I should probably stop doing that.

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So there you have it, I’ve only just started being subjected to this tripe, but she’s bang on the money – GOD LIKE ??